Profile: Health care for the poor

[photo YuvalAsner align=left] SAN FRANCISCO (JTA) – Yuval Asner of South Bend, Ind., spent the year between college and medical school with Avodah: The Jewish Service Corps as a health advocacy fellow with the Medicare Rights Center in New York.

Asner, a self-identified secular Jew, majored in Jewish studies as an undergraduate and wanted to take a year off to do service with a Jewish component.

He spent the 2003-04 academic year living in a communal house with other Avodah volunteers, helping low-income New Yorkers gain access to health care, sometimes representing them in court.

“It was very high level work for someone just out of college,” says Asner, 26, now a third-year medical student at Indiana University in Indianapolis. “It was immensely rewarding and related to what I wanted to do.”
The year he devoted to this Jewish service program “definitely” affected his future plans.

“It gave me a realistic view of what it’s like to have difficulty accessing health care in the United States,” he says.

Asner is now pursuing a master’s degree in public health and policy studies along with his medical degree, and plans to work with the underserved throughout his career.